NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: Peer-Led Residences Expand as Alternative to Psychiatric Hospitals, Teen Charged in East Harlem Shooting, and MTA Data Show Worst Summer Subway Delays Since 2018

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Small residential facilities where people can stay during mental health crises are expanding across New York, growing from eight in 2021 to 43 statewide. Meanwhile, prosecutors say 18-year-old Faisil McCants faces federal robbery and gun charges in an East Harlem shooting that killed 69-year-old bystander Robin Wright. The NYPD says he is also charged with murder and weapons offenses. Also, New York’s LGBTQ+ film festival NewFest is offering free screenings to Arizonans after Phoenix’s Desperado Film Festival was canceled under federal orders targeting diversity and inclusion programs. Plus, MTA data show major incidents delaying 50 or more trains peaked in June and July, marking the worst summer for subway service since 2018.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, September 5th. Here's your morning headlines from Michael Hill. In New York, there's a growing alternative to hospitals for people seeking support during mental health crises. WMIC's Caroline Lewis has more on that. More small residential facilities are opening, where people can stay for days or weeks during a mental health crisis and are free to come and go as they please. Statewide, there are now 43 such residences, up from 8 in 2021. Some of these homes rely primarily on peer counselors who have their

own experiences with mental illness. A 2018 study found these peer-led programs reduced hospitalizations and health care costs. A newer crisis residence model also includes nurses and psychiatrists. But there are limitations. These centers can't take patients who pose a danger to themselves or others. An 18-year-old is facing federal charges in the East Harlem shooting to kill a 69-year-old woman last week. Prosecutors say, Faisal McCants, robbed a man-gun point, then fired 15 rounds from a machine gun down a city street, hitting and killing Robin Wright, who was a bystander using her walker on the sidewalk. Prosecutors have filed federal robbery and gun charges. And against McCants. The NYPD says he's also facing murder and weapons charges. Authorities

is still looking, they say, for two co-conspirators. McCant's attorney's information was not immediately available. New York City's annual LGBTQ Plus film festival known as Newfest is giving Arizona free access to screenings after a queer film festival in Phoenix shut down last month. Paradise Valley Community College, which hosted the Desperado Film Festival in Arizona. Arizona canceled it this year, citing federal orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Newfest executive director David Hatkoff says offering free access is about more than movies. By existing, just by telling our stories, just by raising our voices, just by gathering together in community, that in and of itself is resistance. Arizona residents will get

complimentary access to a selection of Newfest 130 films when the festival runs from October 9th of the 21st in New York, organizers will announce the lineup next Wednesday. 69 and mostly cloudy going up to 83 today under mostly sunny skies with a light wind. It's Friday. That means it's time for our weekly segment of On the Way. Covering all things transportation, that's after the break. NYC. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It's time for On the Way. Our weekly segment on all things considered breaking down the week's Transit News, joining us, WNYC's Transportation Reporter, Stephen Nesson and Ramsey

Kulife. So New Yorkers who recently rode the subway know that things have not really been great recently out there with all the problems happening. Ramsey, you've been looking into the numbers from June and July? Can you just walk us through what you found? Yeah, I looked at three different data points to kind of understand some of the pain riders have been

experiencing so far this summer after big infrastructure failures. So you remember the power outages at West 4th Street. You can remember that there was the flooding that really put the one, two, and three trains in some trouble. One data point I focus on was major incidents. The MTA defines as when the subway experiences 50 or more delays from an incident. Riders can imagine how disruptive that is when your entire train line is down. You're stuck at a station for more than 20 minutes or worse, maybe stuck

inside a tunnel. There were the most major incidents in June and July this year since June and July of 2018. And the MTA says this was due to those few incidents, the flooding, the power outages, and that it really skewed the data. But there's also all the delays that we found because of infrastructure or equipment failures. Think aging, electric, and signal systems. Those were the highest in July since the MT started sharing this data five years ago.

But the MT points to their on-time performance metric, basically how often a train gets to its destination on time within a certain window, typically five minutes. That number is relatively high and it's about to be the same as last summer. The MTA doesn't think it's a fair picture just to look at the June and July data, but they get to share their major incidents and other delayed data information for August, and I'm sure we'll be giving it a look once that's up.

Totally. And it is always tricky to parse historic subway metrics. That's because the goalposts have changed somewhat over the years. While the MTA does include a lot more data online now, it's also adjusted schedules over the years. It's reduced some service on lines, increased on others, which makes taking a historic look kind of tricky. There's also electronic signals on some lines, so it's not all apples to apples comparisons across subway lines.

But like Ramsey was saying, you know, the metrics focused on the riders experience, like how long you wait for a train, how long your trip is. You know, most people don't ride end to end so that on-time performance number doesn't mean a lot to most riders. But even still, all of those numbers took a hit this summer. And a lot of the reasons, like Ramsey mentioned, are about the infrastructure being beyond its useful life, the phrase the MTA likes to use. And the agency is focused on upgrading it, improving the electric, the signals, adding more flood protections. So when we get those heavy rains, it's not, you know, a shutdown of the system. And the majority of the current $65 billion capital plan is going to upgrade those items. But again, those aren't things that will improve overnight.

It may take years to see the benefits. Okay. Well, we're being kind of hard on the subways. But let's move over to the city's bus lines, which got a report card today, right, from Comptroller Bradlander. Not great. Stephen, what is the report card? And what does it mean for riders?

I know. The school just started and report cards are already out. So the Comptroller looked at bus speeds, on-time performance, frequency of delays, and found that more than half of the city's 332 bus lines got a D or an F, bad grades. The borough with the worst grades was Manhattan, where 73% of buses failed to get better than a D. Lander blames mostly bad traffic for that. He did give at least one bus in each borough in A. Congrats.

Kudos to the Q60 runs from LaGuardia to Harlem. Nice. The B-31 from Gerritson Beach to Midwood in Brooklyn, BX-29 in the Bronx, and Q35 in Queens, two Staten Island buses as well. But Lander isn't just doing this for sport. He wants the MTA to study the performance on each line and make it a point for them to increase the performance line by line, maybe make small improvements each year to the worst lines, something that the public can track and see.

The MTA just said it broadly agrees with Lander, and it noted that it's been doing these borough bus route redesigns, redesigning the bus routes in each borough for the first time ever. That could help. And both Lander and the MTA agree bus priority lanes, those lanes just for buses, help, and those cameras that ticket vehicles that park in bus lanes should speed up service. The Lander says one thing the MTA could do that would speed up, buses right now is allow all-door boarding. That is tapping your Omnicard at the back or the front of the bus. Right now, you can only do that on select bus service buses, but not local buses.

And that's because fare evasion on buses is top of mind for MTA officials who say at one point, yeah, it's reached, at one point reached nearly 50% of all riders not paying their fare. So they've made efforts to curb this problem, including adding MTA agents on select routes every week to check to see people's tickets. That's in coordination with the NYPD who can issue summonses a fine if a rider doesn't pay the fare. And for local buses, the agency doesn't typically open up their backdoor unless commuters are getting off.

Right. So with that enforcement blitz, fare evasion numbers are still stubbornly high. For all buses, it's about 44% last quarter. And it's especially high on those SBS buses, which have what exactly rear door boarding. Yeah. Of course, the other thing, Lander says that could speed up buses is just to not collect fares at all. an idea that leading mayoral candidates around Mamdani is calling for, free buses for everyone, which lander supports.

Okay, moving on here, Stephen, you stop by an exhibit at Grand Central Terminal. It's put on by the Transit Museum. It features New Yorker, cartoons, and covers about the subway system. What did you think? What are your takeaways? Well, first of all, it was really fun. The curator did an amazing job, breaking it up into different sections. So there's commuter behavior, critters on the subway.

The Wading experience, service changes, things we've all experienced. She reviewed 500 New Yorker cartoons from the last 100 years and winnowed it down to maybe the best two dozen or so. And, you know, it really captures the experience of like being on the subway system. They have one from the very first issue of the magazine from 1925 where a guy is wiping the grime off a subway car next to a sign that says, please help us keep the Ellen subway clean. I think he's just cleaning it so we could see where his stop is. But it's, you know, the irony is there, the New Yorker humor, even from the very beginning. I chatted with one of the New Yorker cartoonists, Ellis Rosen who came by, his works featured in the show.

He has one of two cowboys standing on the platform. I don't know if you've seen this. They're both standing. One's on the platform. One's in the open door of a train. And the caption says, you ain't getting on this train till I get off first. Okay. I was curious how Rosen came up with this cartoon.

This is what he said. It's not a law. It should be a law. In my family, anyway, this is like a very important subway etiquette rule that should be enforced, in my opinion, through cowboy dueling, whatever you call that. Normally you're making fun of etiquette, but in this case, I'd take this very seriously. So I couldn't make fun of it. Had to just make fun of the offenders. The exhibit runs through October. Let's check it out. Very cool. All right, every week in our On the Way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter. This one is from Barbara in Manhattan. who asks, officials are still touting the success of congestion pricing. But it seems to me that the bad old days are coming back a little. Are there any recent stats or are they still using the early numbers?

So, Barbara, if you're referring to the bad old days as Manhattan's traffic before congestion pricing, you might have been noticing how busy the city gets during the peak summer tour seasons in June, July, and August. By the latest metrics, the congestion pricing program is actually still achieving its gold. That data that we have shows that vehicles traveling into the central beach. business district, Manhattan below 60th Street, is down 12% compared to those two months combined last year. There's also more riders on the subways, average daily subway ridership for June and July and August was higher this summer than the last summer.

It's helpful to take maybe summer holidays into account when New Yorkers are maybe getting in cars commuting outside the city to nearby states or towns for the holidays. It could mean heavier congestion in the tunnels and on bridges leaving Manhattan. All right. Time to get out of here. Thanks to Barbara for the question. Thanks to WNYC's Ramsey Gleifay and Stephen Nesson. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question over your own by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gothamis.com slash on the way. Partners, thanks so much. Thanks for listening.

This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. More soon.